Messages

I just very confused by your anger. This is not an exact science. I've explained how I personally rate games, not because I feel it needs defending, but because you seem determined to find fault with the process.

The Order was rated be me. I liked it. I found it strong in some areas and lacking in others. The art style (your painting) initially struck me as somewhat rudimentary, but it grew on me the further I played, despite it's simplicity. I admire the fact that you painted the entire game, but how you achieved said art, or how long it may have took you, bore no impact on my rating, nor should it. And while rudimentary, it was consistent, which is a plus.

You seem to take umbrage with me expressing my opinion, when it is simply just my opinion. And I don't see how I could have addressed your art without forming an opinion. The panel comment, which you angrily posted about, reflects this:

"And while the art isn't strictly of the highest quality, the artist must be commended for their dedication to painting it all by hand."

Like I said in my earlier post, if you decide your next game has better art, does that mean I was actually right in my opinion?

I didn't rate your first game, but the person who did obviously found something worthwhile contained in it, and did so without having your second game to compare it against. You seem determined to have your art judged according to how much value you, the artist, confer on it, and in doing so, you may be setting yourself up for constant disappointment.

And even if I had rated your first game, I can assure you the quality of that first game would not have effected my rating of the second. I may have noted in the panel comment that your second game was an improvement on your first, but I wouldn't have increased my rating, or retroactively reduced the rating of your first game.

But rating my first game the same as the second game just makes me wonder if they have any clue how they are reviewing the games. If they gave the first game 1 cup and the second game 3 cups it would make sense. But this is ridiculous.

Why? Do all artists inherently make better art as time progresses? And by "better", do we mean more polished? Is polished art better than unpolished art?

Maybe I don't have a clue what I'm making, and the crap that I made to learn how AGS works is as valuable as something I put more than two years of my life in it.

If your first game was crap, why did you release it? Did you know it was crap when you released it, or are you saying that you now consider it crap? Did you want people to play your crap, and call it crap, just so you could release a second game to earn kudos for how much better the second game is compared to the first? Will you retroactively announce this second game is crap as soon as you release a third one? Do I you see why some are saying this is a bad look for you, or do I have to elaborate on this dumb excuse for a gag any further?

I do think there is a bit of a problem with the Panel ratings

Fair enough, but some of your points raise their own problems. Such as, what is the acceptable granulation level for ratings? Half cups? Quarter cups? Ratings comprised of .1 increments? Just what would be the differences between a 3.4 and a 3.6 cup game? I'll go further, and ask what the difference between a 3 and 3.5 cup game is? To me, all that half tells me is that the game is good, but wasn't good enough to be a four? Maybe that's just me, though.

As to MAGS or commercial games, are we talking about handicaps or demerits? Should we be harsher on commercial games, or more forgiving of MAGS games?

Personally, if a game is worth playing, I don't feel the need to examine how it came into being. Factors such as development time, or the number of people involved shouldn't, to me anyway, bear any influence on the most important factor: enjoyment.

As to panel transparency, the panel was always intended to be anonymous, but I've long since waved my own anonymity. And while we do have guidelines, and we do occasionally discuss ratings as a whole, we also trust the abilities of each other to be fair and knowledgeable on the subject.

I think people should remember that 3 cups = Good. Numbers before 3 are less good. Numbers after 3 are...more good.

If your game gets 3 cups, you made a good game.

[There's]

I'm not sure if this was mentioned before, or is connected to an existing bug, but using an apostrophe results in a bonus backslash appearing:

There's

vs

There\'s

Not the most egregious of bugs, I'll admit...

Nice!

I grew up with this music. I mean, wait, some history needs explaining. Halas and Bachelor, a British animation company, made a short animation using Kraftwerk's Autobahn as inspiration... Christ, it's burned into my memory! You have no idea how much it influenced both my taste in music and...well, just watch it! Anyhoo, it was a staple on Irish TV station RTE during the '80s, usually shown as part of what they called "Cartoon Time", a five to ten minute fill-in broadcast between programs. In fact, it was either Autobahn or...

...this! Ronnie James Dio singing Love is All from Roger Glover's (ex Deep Purple) concept album The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast. I can't even begin to guess at how many times this was broadcast in Ireland!

Both tracks are indelibly scored into my brain. So much so, that I often forget just how many years have passed since I first heard them!

In fact, if a music video contained animation it was likely that it would stick in my mind. Like this...

...Rondò Veneziano's La Serenissima which, if memory serves, was broadcast once or twice at the time it as released, and, up until the dawn of Youtube and such, haunted me; I mean, look at it! Imagine seeing it at age eight or nine and not knowing who or what it was, faceless androids, spaceships and all!

Didn't expect to hear him here.

It's all thanks to TV5 (or TV5Monde, as it's now known), which my mother was a big fan of (the music and arts programs, anyway). She was a fan of french artists in general; Jaques Brel, Charles Aznavour, lot's of French jazz, etc. But watching French TV, and lots of music programs (particularly those nostalgia-heavy ones hosted by Patrick Sébastien), meant we were exposed to dozens of unfamiliar singers and musicians; huge artists in their home country, of course, but not so well known in, for instance, Ireland.

Is this in replies to messages from users with a space in their user name?

No, no spaces or fancy usernames.

This may be a reply to me, as I asked LimpingFish a question the other day via PM.

Indeed it was. I thought perhaps some blocking function or some such had been mistakenly triggered, but...

If you just write the new message this doesn't happen, like only when replying?

Actually, new messages seem to work. I sent @heltenjon a test PM just now, and it was successful.

EDIT: And the reply is also working now.

For the record, the error was constant over the weekend (or at least Saturday night and all of Sunday), and I was also getting the odd forum error here and there during that period. I don't think it was a cache problem with my browser, since I cleared the refreshed multiple times, but who knows?

Thanks anyway.

"An Error has occurred...No direct access..."

When I try to reply to a PM, I get the above error.

Anyone else having this problem? Am I missing something? Something on my end, perhaps?

[Clannad]

Some good stuff in these last few posts!

As for myself...

Clannad recently (finally!) released an expanded version of their Robin of Sherwood OST album Legend, which has got me back into listening to them. This song is not from that album, funnily enough, but rather it's probably the lesser regarded of their 80's hits, behind Harry's Game and In a Lifetime at least, but I prefer it to those songs myself.

The video sucks so hard though, with the band looking awkward, and the other scenes looking...well, see for yourself.

As I've mentioned before, Men Without Hats are one of my favorite synth-pop groups of the 80s, and since their 1984 album Folk of the 80s (Part III) recently got added to Spotify, they've again been in regular rotation on my playlists.

Still going strong at 77 is France's Julien Clerc, though this, one of his most famous songs, is from his 1971 album Niagara.

Cass Elliot, of The Mamas & the Papas fame, recorded, in my opinion, some of her best work solo. This song, California Earthquake, is from her 1968 debut solo album, Dream a Little Dream.

And for something completely different, homemade synth genius Bruce Haack and his song Blowjob, from his album Haackula, recorded in 1978 but unreleased until 2021. It... speaks to me.

Since it's hard to convey tone or intent with text, and to avoid similar situations in the future, I'd please ask that people wait until a moderator responds to any board violations, however slight, or contact a moderator through PM. If you simply must comment, perhaps a helpful nudge towards the rules thread might be more appropriate.

Anyhow, I'm glad to see things have been sorted out.

EDIT: Having just played the game, I'd agree with @eri0o and @heltenjon. There's a lot of promise in how you've set up the story, and the visuals and sound work well. I was all set to see what happened when I put a coin into the Polybius cabinet... I guess I'll have to wait for the sequel!

A lighter look at the situation I mentioned earlier, explaining that not only did the Democrats clearly not run on a "woke" platform, but that they likely alienated those that expected them to offer an alternative to republican policies, and not, y'know...the same policies!

Philip Reines, who has advised the last three democratic candidates says most Democrats are basically Republicans (and he admits that he himself is to the right of most Republicans on certain topics!), and that it's time to stop kowtowing to the minority extremist left. The "woke" is why Harris lost. To him, the real enemies are Bernie Sanders and those that think like him.

Conversely, here's Sanders' statement about the election loss:

https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1854271157135941698

Now, I'm no Bernie Bro, and I've disagreed with some of his stances in the past, but which of these two theories seem the most sensible? Is it the one says that a number of, frankly, hallucinated issues are the reason why Trump triumphed, and that it's not the real Democratic Party's fault, it's the fault of woke extremists? You fools! It wasn't the economy, it wasn't the lack of counter-policies, it was the average man's annoyance at not being able to say what they really feel; that trans people are icky! Reines ignores the fact that it's Republicans who can't stop talking, or thinking, about genitals and pronouns, fighting against imagined blue-haired ghosts, introducing sweeping draconian laws based on their disgust and fear towards an infinitesimally small number of Americans. To beat them, the Democrats have to become more like them. Ignore those queer minorities, stop those pesky immigrants, don't you want to make America great again?!

It's fucking insane.

The Democratic Party has circled the wagons to protect the Democratic Party, as they always do, and they will blame anything and everyone, except themselves.

An interesting point that someone mentioned on the news (BBC, I think...) was that it doesn't seem like Trump got substantially more votes than he did in 2016, he simply won back those that he lost in 2020.

So, less a "strong mandate from the American people" and more of a case of the same people voting for Trump as have always voted for him. I think a lot of the finger-pointing at white women, Latino men and black men, is simply exasperated disbelief that people would so willingly vote against their own interests. Twice.

It wasn't the Republicans who won the election, it was the Democrats who lost it. And, like 2016, they will learn absolutely nothing.

Something was up when the editors of the LA Times and the Washington Post were explicitly told not to endorse a candidate (something both papers have done for years). The excuse was "impartiality", the truth was the both were going to endorse Harris, and both papers are owned by billionaires (the Times by Patrick Soon-Shiong and the Post by Jefty Bozos Jeff Bezos).

Would it have made a difference? Not likely, but it's indicative of the one-percent's desire for a Trump-controlled White House. Trust me, none of them are shedding any tears over the coming dismantling of democracy. Not when there's money to be made!

Had Biden dropped out six months earlier? Had Harris distanced herself from Biden's policies a little more succinctly? Had the Democrats learned anything from running Clinton in 2016? Meh.

It's not as if the Democrats really offered a strong alternative to Republican policies. In fact, save for the extreme, Democrat policy hews pretty close to Republican policy.

I don't mean to be rude, but is bobjowanny a real person, or is that a ChatGPT response?

Ahem.

Interestingly, I've been recently looking at some AI tools available to detect AI text responses. As a test, I ran the response in question through GPTZero, and the results were 0% Human, 0% Mixed, 100% AI, based on various factors (construction, writing style, etc.)

So, to give the user the benefit of the doubt, they may not be a bot but they likely didn't write that response themselves.

Some of the spam accounts we've been seeing lately seem to be ChatGPT-fueled bots.

what did I miss 

Depends on what you where aiming at.


Still, it's kind of cool to think that, eleven years later, we're still here.

Look, just let me say this. If artists feel the need to distance their work from Generative AI, going so far as to highlight a lack of AI in their work as a selling point, then Generative AI is not in a good place to influence a massive paradigm shift such as those seen with the examples @Snarky listed. I'm not saying it's impossible, or even unlikely, just not as it currently stands. Corporations will tell us otherwise, because of the unending profits they envisage (visions which are purely responsible for the head-spinning speed of AI deployment), but until someone, someone not currently invested in the con job, shows us a usage beyond "It can write a book/make a movie/compose a symphony for you!...Hell, it can write a card to your daughter on her birthday!"... it won't happen.

That is, until it makes society ask how they ever lived without it, Generative AI will remain something of a niche product; useful to a few, but more of a weird toy to the public at large, with so much negative baggage that only those looking to exploit it will openly admit to using it for artistic purposes.

At least that's how I see it.

...

Ps. Fuck Generative AI.

EDIT: Unless you've been living in a cave with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears, you'll have no doubt experienced one of the many adverts extolling the inclusion of AI-based tools specific to photo-editing on your cellphone (from Samsung, Google, etc.), that will make everybody in your photos smile, or delete some creepy dude in the background of a photo of your dog skateboarding, and such. But, beyond being antithetical to the truth (imagined or otherwise) of documenting a single moment in time, I find that I kinda don't have that big of a problem with it.

Go figure.

Also, don't forget that Sterling is a huge hypocrite that didn't pay their editor properly (it take a bit of looking up, but you can find Nick's response to the whole ordeal if you look around). I wouldn't listen to anything that grifter has to say if I was any of you. Although I suppose even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Well, I'm not going to get into that, only to say that a lot of info I found on the topic (apart from the editors original statement) seems come from center-right to right-wing youtubers; the same kind of people who claim similar ill of Hasan Piker, Lindsay Ellis, or any number of "leftist/liberal" commenters.

I've been watching, listening, and reading JS Sterling for a very long time, and rarely have I found myself with opposing opinions. But nobody is perfect.

And we all have our biases; if someone linked to a Destiny rant, or such, I'd also object.

Regardless, she's dead right in this instance.

But back to AI...

While I'm not against generative AI in and of itself, it can't really be denied that the way it has currently been built up and implemented is definitely immoral, and probably illegal as well.

Quite, but you also have to realize that it's also working exactly as intended. This was always the plan, and there is no going back. You'll find that these corporations are willing to spend billions of dollars, if the end goal is (in their eyes) unlimited profit, to circumvent current or future laws.

...

Also, piracy is fine.

(Warning for...ooer...saucy language.)

Sums up the situation rather eloquently.

@Pomperipossas_Godishus

AI is not magic. Also...you seem to have fallen down an AI rabbit-hole, and you're just throwing ideas out there without actually thinking about how they would work, or even the logistics of how to begin to make them work. And just saying "AI!" is not the answer.
...

You're not an AI, are you?

[Sparks]

Sparks! I highly recommend Edgar Wright's 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers, as well as most, if not all, of Spark's discography.

I used to watch this as a child. In the '80s, obviously, I'm not THAT old. And in English, but f'me the English version of the theme is absolutely NOWHERE to be found. You can also check out Michel Legrand's music for the Once Upon a Time... series. The theme song for ...Life has literally been embedded in my brain since childhood. Ditto the theme song for ...Space.

I know I posted a number of tracks from this album before, Tino Casal's  Lagrimas de Crocodrilo from 1987, but it really is that good. 

And this track from Kraan, a German prog rock band performing since the early 1970s, is taken from their 2020 album Sandglass.

The Art of Noise and Max Headroom; two names that will mean absolutely NOTHING to you if you weren't alive during the 1980s.